Getting Your Kicks from Taekwon Do Patterns

By Colin Wee

Taekwon Do is defined by the Founder of Taekwon-Do:

"Translated literally 'Tae' stands for jumping or flying, to kick or smash with the foot. 'Kwon' denotes the fist -- chiefly to punch or destroy with the hand or fist. 'Do' means an art or way... "     itf-information.com 1999

So when does a beginner learn how to jump, fly, kick or smash with the foot?

There is the front kick in Doh-san (the third form in the Chang Hon set of patterns), and the side kick in Won-hyo, the very next form. However, the next few only seem to feature variations of these two kicks. Only in Hwa-rang and Choong-Mu, the eighth and ninth featured patterns do you see a roundhouse kick and then a jumping side-kick.

This article looks at possible reasons for the above discrepancy. The objective is to help the practitioner understand how Taekwon Do forms positioned kicks as effective weapons. To do this, we will explore the issue from three perspectives:

1.     Background of Taekwon Do's development,
2.     Purpose of forms, and
3.     Successful kicking factors.

We will conclude by forming some recommendations aligned with the practice of Taekwon Do patterns.

The Military and The Design of Taekwon Do

From information on the A-KaTo website (a-kato.org), we see that in the mid 1950s, there was effort to "unify the many" and disparate martial art schools in Korea. The Founder of Taekwon Do, General Choi Hong Hi proposed the name 'Taekwon Do' and was the sole architect of the original set of Taekwon Do patterns. This we can confirm from a recent interview with International Ch'ang Hon Taekwon-Do Federation President, GM Kong Young Il, a 9^th Degree practitioner and former first generation student of General Choi's (Ictf.web.com).

While the design of Taekwon Do must have drawn from existing practice, one cannot discount the influence that General Choi had on the formation of this new system. Some questions that may be asked in this vein:

In a recount of Taekwon Do's history (Morris 1999), it seemed that Taekwon Do's and the General's "greatest turning point" was during the Korean War in 1952 where President Syngman Rhee "ordered his military chiefs of staff to require all Korean soldiers to receive training in the martial arts." To this, we can assume that General Choi, as a military officer responsible to oversee such training and development, must have had to establish quality standards and ensure that soldiers learn effective martial skills that he demonstrated to President Rhee.

The first main point is this: Taekwon Do had to be taught to a great many soldiers and had to maintain the highest standards of effectiveness. This means the system that General Choi had to create would have to integrate itself into an existing military training system (see Appendix: Schedule of Military Training), and take into account a soldier's needs while outfitted with heavy military gear.

The design of this system, may have designed the martial art syllabus with no kicks for personnel during their initial basic and/or vocational training. Why? Stuart Anslow (3^rd Dan) from Rayners Lane Taekwondo Academy in the UK offers the idea that maybe "hand techniques are easier and quicker to master... than kicking techniques" (Anslow 2001). This ensures that the few devastating techniques taught would actually work when required.

The second stage of training from month 3 or 6 could then introduce one or two 'staple' kicks (along with variations), as evidenced from Doh-san to Toi-gye. This is reasonable if one thinks of the saying 'less is more' for combat personnel wearing heavy boots.

If this is true, then similar to basic military training, the student learns a few techniques at first so that each one learned is an effective weapon.

Purpose of the Form

What is the purpose of Kata? It is a popular understanding that Kata houses tactics that allow a practitioner to learn all the moves necessary for a particular purpose. However, the question still remains -- why only two kicks for the first seven patterns? This may be because the pattern teaches only the required minimum tactics and the more important strategy for a particular combative encounter.

So advice such as from A-KaTo's Mike Proctor Sensei (8^th dan) to "raise your arms for coverage when the opponent is closer" should go into the "close quarter combat" pattern. The pattern doesn't have to list down all tactics, but cover the combative situation well enough so that the practitioner can "adapt, improvise, and overcome" during that particular encounter.

On this note, I remember one lesson by A-KaTo's Paul Hinkley Sensei (5^th Dan) discussing the kicks we were practicing. He put forth that many techniques in the martial arts teach parameters of body movement. What Mr Hinkley meant is that if you were taught a front kick delivered on a vertical plane, and then a roundhouse kick delivered on a horizontal plan, all slices between those two "parameters" would describe an infinite number of variations that are plausible and acceptable.

Drilled then on the front and side kick, beginning practitioners schooled on Chang Hon patterns would first have the vertical plane from the front kick, and secondly a side thrusting motion. In addition, observing the roundhouse/turning kick of more skilled practitioners, they could apply different variations where necessary. These building block moves could conceivably produce almost all the kicking variations required for targets waist high and below.

If this line of argument holds true, then forms introduce kicking techniques with the knowledge that all strikes are strategically initiated. Rather than mere recipes of how to do a specific strike or all possible strikes, the forms show possibilities for practitioners to innovate and remain effective.

Successful Kicking

I spent 8 years in my first martial art before joining Bryan Robbins Sensei's (7^th Dan) class. I was previously trained to have beautiful, fast and powerful kicks. Only problem was because I came from a "light" contact style, it seemed I wasn't able to land any of my techniques during my first few months of sparring at Southern Methodist University.

Yet, a person trained in kicks like myself uses kicks more frequently when learning to spar, irrespective of whether the kicks land. The reason is that kicking "imposes respect of distance" (Yates 1988 17), keeping one "safely" away from an opponent trying to knock you out.

After several months out of my comfort zone, I found increasing success with my kicks and hand techniques. Both seemed to improve simultaneously as I began to understand how to calibrate and land techniques. As an aside, given my previous training and flexibility, I found no greater difficulty striking with simple kicks as I could with sophisticated kicks.

Here is an informal list of success factors in striking a person with a kick.

• Set of targets: The targets available to your kicks are different than those for your hands. As your sighting mechanism is located closer to your hands than your feet, you need to expand your perspective to "see" which targets on your opponent are accessible and possible for your legs. This can be partly accomplished by kneeling down and looking at an opponent from hip level.


• Distancing: Beginners learn how to kick in the air or on a power bag. At best this trains you only on one distance and at worse it doesn't help you understand how to strike a human target. Kicks need to land on a body that is moving toward and away from you. This will introduce variations from the "picture perfect" basics you learn. Learning how to modify kicking distances using your leg is a challenge.


• Angle of entry : The opponent is not going to let you kick him. The kick will have to weave through the cover provided by arms and will have to strike perpendicular to the target. This means you will have to recognise holes in your opponent's coverage and match your kicking trajectory through those openings.


• Vectors : Related to "Angle of entry", vectors pertain mainly to the roundhouse kick. Knowledge of vectors allows you to place your foot on the target by going around and bypassing your opponent's arms. This is done by recognising that your leg is not straight, that all you need to do is to "fit" your foot onto an accessible target rather than swing your entire shin onto the opponent.


• Non-telegraphed moves : Mr Hinkley was always big on not telegraphing moves -- and he's absolutely correct! One shift of your support leg or the habitual swing of your arms to pull that leg through, and your opponent will already know what you're doing. Legs travel further! So the less time your opponent has before knowing the kick is coming, the better.


• Blind spots : Your opponent has "blind spots" caused by the positioning of glove, lead shoulder, legs, or arms. So long as there is something between his eyes and the lower part of your body, a kick can be sent along this "shadow region" with more likelihood of the opponent not seeing the initial movement of your legs.


• Feinting : The leg travels slower, so if you want to hit someone, try making them think something else is happening! Feint with your hands or with your other leg.


• Speed modulation : Kicks don't have to be done all at the same speed. I once knocked out a good friend of mine with the slowest front kick. The problem was that he was anticipating a faster kick, and I changed the speed it was travelling at. Try this: throw a front kick with slow initial speed and grunt accordingly when it's supposed to land. Then speed it up and change it into a roundhouse kick.


• Mobility : It doesn't take more than 2 inches for most medium to high level kicks to lose effectiveness. All your opponent has to do is shift backward a little and you miss. Your support leg and hip flexibility helps reduce this problem a little. Hop. Stretch. Gain those 2 inches or more back.

How much of the above can I attribute either directly or indirectly to effective forms practice? The table below shows my thoughts of whether forms have a positive, negative or no effect on the ability for a person to kick.

Table 1 Effect of Forms Practice on Kicking Ability